The Six-Gun Tarot

by R. S. Belcher

  Eventually it all cooled off in the frigid night, the former home of the Darklings, now a graveyard littered with God’s newly hung stars. Biqa looked up at the ethereal chip of lunar rock hanging in the dark sky and his heart ached for home.

  But he couldn’t go back. Not until this duty was done. God and His attendants had made that very clear to him. He was to stand watch, to guard and to wait.

  So he waited. Time passed and the Earth greened. He waited.

  He came to think that God had created this place as a prison, a punishment for those in the Host who displeased Him. It was so awful here, so cold and unconnected. Every time he remembered with his perfect crystalline memory the glory that was God’s presence, he fell to the dirt and ash and shook with sadness and regret. Nothing was worse than being away from He who had willed him to exist.

  Other times he grew so angry that he nearly hurled his flaming sword into the darkness of space and cursed the name of the Lord, but he knew his duty; he knew to Whom his loyalty remained. So he did nothing.

  He waited. He watched mountains rise from valleys and oceans cut continents in two. The rain and the snow kissed his skin, like a balm that made the pain, the loneliness, the despair, ease in him.

  Each day he watched the sunrise like it was a letter from home.

  In time, he came to appreciate what God was trying to do here and he marveled at the creator’s aesthetic. He had crafted from offal, from cosmic refuse and the basest of atoms, a re-creation of Heaven that could move an angel to song or tears. Bravo.

  Biqa was less impressed with the parade of living things the Almighty frittered with on the surface. When they didn’t work out He would wipe them away with a shrug and a comet. The world would be wiped clean of life in blood and fire and then back to the drawing board. Biqa noted that one extinction led to the next refinement of whatever tenacious life managed to cling to the cold, broken rock. So there was no wasted motion; each ending moved toward a new beginning. Truly, God was a sculptor beyond reproach.

  Biqa knew others from the Host were moving upon the Earth, on various missions commissioned by God. None of them ever visited him. They avoided him, partly, he was convinced, due to his odious duty and partly out of fear of angering the Lord and sharing his outcast fate.

  Some nights, when it was quiet and clear, he could hear them singing up in Heaven and his cheeks would grow wet.

  He waited. But the feeling of abandonment clung to his shoulders like heavy stones. He counted the grains of sand upon the ground as best he could until he lost count. He longed to play a game, to chase his brethren among the stars, laughing, the solar wind kissing his face. His father, looking down upon His playing children, giving them His approval, His unconditional love.

  Biqa’s face fell to his hands, hands capable of splitting atoms, and he cried in his utter loneliness and his regret. He wished he had never questioned, wished he had never thought.

  Something small and soft touched his knee. Startled, he looked up to see three of the little furry creatures that hid so shyly in the tree line had braved the ground and had actually padded up to him. They seemed curious about what he was doing.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered to the tiny, expressive faces of the little mortals. “Fear not. Fear not.”

  He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand. The creature that had touched him reached up and took it gently. Biqa was speechless. The little climber’s hand was the same as the angel’s, only smaller and lined with random swirls and loops carved into the skin. It shook him, dreadfully. He had seen nothing of himself in all the eons that life had fought for dominance on God’s arena. He had seen beauty, to be sure; he had seen the will to endure, the beginnings of order. But in this tiny hand the angel finally saw his own legacy. He looked up to the face of the tiny, hairy creature. The tears began anew when he looked upon its full regard. The little thing patted his hand, gently, comfortingly.

  In this foul, matted little creature the angel saw God’s love, God’s mercy and pity, God’s eyes.

  “I … I … Thank you…,” Biqa said, and tried to embrace the creature. All three of them shrieked at the rising giant and skittered off into the high grass and eventually back to their trees.

  And Biqa understood why he was there and why God had chosen him. He was more than just a warden, an exile. He was the critic, the skeptic who had to be shown.

  He took up his sword of fire and he waited.

  But now he no longer waited alone.

  The Ten of Pentacles

  It was after noon when Mutt ascended Argent Mountain. He rode up Prosperity, passing the narrow maze-like alleys of Bick Street that made up most of Johnny Town, on the right. Prosperity became less of a road and more of a rutted path as his horse, a darkly dabbled paint named Muha, began to climb up the winding trail. “Muha” meant “moon” in Mutt’s mother’s language. He sometimes wanted to name the horse Crazy, because he was the only animal that had never been spooked by Mutt.

  When he was a child, his mother’s people, the Shoshokos, were looked down on by the other Shoshoni tribes because they were too poor to have horses and had to dig in the dirt for their food. Once, Mutt and a few of the other young men of the village went out with a party of the older men in an attempt to steal horses from a bunch of arrogant Ute merchants who had passed through the village a few days earlier. The plan failed miserably when the horses screamed like frightened women at Mutt’s approach. The Ute were alerted to the attempted theft and nearly killed several members of the raiding party. Back home Mutt was beaten half to death by the elders and lived alone at the edge of the village for two months. Mutt had learned to stay upwind from horses.

  Argent was a gentle slope for the first few hundred feet. The trails were well worn and wide enough for wagons, or several riders side-by-side. Some sagebrush and Indian rice grass sparsely covered the sides of the path. A few yellow flowers managed to fight their way out of the sagebrush’s thin branches. Their existence in such a hot, desolate place made them all the more beautiful. Mrs. Stapleton pushed her way into his thoughts again at the sight of the desert flowers, but only for a moment.

  The squatter camps were another few hundred feet up. To his left, the deputy could see Golgotha below him, bustling with goings-on. The town was busy enough still, even with the closing of the silver mine a few years back. Enough people passed through here on their way to California or headed back to the East. The town’s location at the edge of the 40-Mile made it a last stop for many before the days of hell began. But it was still a far cry from when silver was first discovered. If that boom had lasted, it would have put Golgotha on the map with places like Carson City, Virginia City and Reno. And he would have been long gone from here.

  He stopped and sniffed the air. He smelled gunpowder, or something like it. Lots of it too. Wagon tracks, fresh from today and weighted down, deep in the dirt were tangled up with the scent. He urged his horse gently on and picked up pace as he headed for the squatter camp.

  About twenty small cabins, shacks and lean-tos clung to the side of Argent Mountain. Another fifteen or so tents were also scattered across the mountain’s face. About half of the squatters chose to live on the eastern side of the mountain, looking down on Golgotha. They were a pretty independent bunch, for the most part.

  In the years that Mutt had been here, he had come to understand the ways the tribes worked in this town. He had learned long ago that an outsider, someone without a pack to call his own, was often better at seeing the invisible divisions between people than a participant in the social dance.

  At the top were the Mormons—mostly wealthy folk who had built up many of the businesses in town. The wealthiest lived on the other side of the town from Argent, up on Rose Hill. They were bankers, cattlemen, schoolmasters, merchants and priests. One even had something to do with the railroad barons back east.

  Below them were the majority of folk in town. They probably owned a small house they had built—maybe a horse o
r two. They scraped by working for themselves or for the folk up on Rose Hill.

  Then there were squatters up here on Argent—they were mostly down-on-their-luck prospectors, grifters and cowboys who had bet their last dollar on Malachi Bick’s silver mine and had lost. They worked odd jobs for people in town; a few were crooks and small-time rustlers. Word had gotten around Nevada that Golgotha’s squatter camp was a good place to lay low for a spell if you needed it. Many folks made a living supporting that small cottage industry. Others, like poor old Earl, had lost almost everything coming out west in the quest for a better life. Earl lost a wife. Many had lost their entire families. In the end they didn’t really care where their bones rested, as long as they could kill the pain with cheap rotgut and solitude.

  After them came the Chinamen. Alien, secretive and stoic. They almost didn’t count, just like Mutt and his mother’s people. It was a toss-up who a white man would rather string up first—an Indian or Chinese. They were outside any tribe but their own and that was just they way they liked it. Just like Mutt.

  The camp was up and staggering about. Those who did an honest day’s work were already down the mountain and had been since before sunup. These were the old, the infirm, the wives and the criminals.

  “Hey, Dep-u-tee!” Grinning Alice shouted to him from her rocker on the uneven porch of her shanty. She was dressed in a filthy chemise. The few teeth she still had were black and there was an ugly scar that looped from the left side of her mouth up to her ear. “Y’all haven’t been back to visit me in a spell. What’s the matter, darlin’, you don’t love me no more?”

  Several of the old men walking up the street guffawed at the whore’s remarks. Mutt shook his head, nodded with a sly grin and kept on riding.

  He stopped and tied Muha to a post in front of the Mother Lode saloon. A half-dozen men, mostly Earl’s age or older, slumped on the porch. They were passing bottles of rotgut back and forth. They all avoided Mutt’s gaze. A hungry-looking young man eyed the Indian’s horse, working out the calculus of hunger and risk behind his lidded eyes. Before he got too far into his equations, Mutt stopped in front of him, and rested his hand on his pistol.

  “If I come out and my horse is gone, I’m going to shoot you. I don’t care who took it—you are the one who ends up dead for it.”

  The kid was silent, but his eyes had grown darker and wider.

  “But if my horse stays put, there’s a short bit in it for you.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He pushed through the tattered trail blanket that was the Mother Lode’s front door.

  Inside it was dark, hot and stuffy. The place smelled of mold, stale sweat and rancid fat from the cheap lamp oil. The floor was dirt and sawdust. A half-dozen squatters sat at the bar and at the few tables that the saloon had. Two old men played checkers at one of the tables—there wasn’t enough money up here for much gambling.

  Mutt’s eyes quickly adjusted to the light. He made his way toward a portly man in a dirty brown vest, seated at the far end of the bar and deep in conversation with another man whose face looked like cracked leather. A small bowler rested on the portly man’s head; the hair peeking out from beneath it was thin, with the color and consistency of oil. He sported muttonchops. A mug danced in his hand as he wildly gesticulated while he talked. The beer in it occasionally splashed out.

  “I tell you, Willie, all you have to do is meet this fella over in Carson City with your long iron,” the portly man said to his sphinx-like companion. “You do a few hours work over there, and then—”

  “Howdy, Deputy,” the leather-faced man said, looking past his companion’s shoulder.

  “Willie,” Mutt said. “Good to see you back in town. I hear you had some trouble down south for a while.”

  “Mexico,” Willie said. “I was a road agent. Shot a fella and his family didn’t cotton to it too well. Had to pull foot, full chisel, and this seemed as good a place as any to prop up my bones.”

  “That it is,” Mutt said. He turned to the barkeep. “Give me a baldface, and trust me, I’ll know if you’re cutting it.” He turned back to address the back of the man in the bowler. “You’re not cutting it, are you, Wynn?”

  Wynn spun to face the deputy. “I resent the insinuation, Deputy! You know I run a first-rate grog shop up here. I don’t cut my whiskey, and I don’t do anything to get Mr. High-and-Mighty Sheriff Highfather sending you up here to impugn—”

  Mutt laughed. He drained the whiskey in a single gulp. “Hell, Wynn, I don’t even know what that word means. I’m here because a lot of folks from up here on the ridge have been coming down with a case of the bughouse crazies. Sheriff figures maybe you are brewing up something that is making that happen. What do you say, Wynn? Maybe a little turpentine in the old mash pot just to make it go a little further?”

  Wynn frowned. “You’re talking about what happened to old Earl yesterday, ain’t ya?”

  “And Daniel Basham, week ’fore that, and Squinty Mary Holt three weeks ago. They all live up here, Wynn, and that makes them your customers.”

  “I swear to you, Mutt, as the Almighty is my witness, I ain’t been making bad mash. ’Sides, Earl and the other two haven’t touched a drop by my hand in months.”

  The barkeep nodded as he refilled Mutt’s glass. “It’s true, Deputy. Lots of folks been staying away since that Holy Roller showed up. I say a man that lets his religion git in the way of his drinking is a fella with his cart ’fore his horse.”

  “Preacher up here?” Mutt said, sipping his whiskey. “Since when?”

  “’Bout three months ago,” Wynn said. “He and that squirrelly deacon o’ his came into town and set up shop at the old Reid homestead over on the northwest slope. Started preaching and next thing I know, some of my best customers are too busy shouting ’bout the dang Raptur to tie on a decent one.”

  “Preacher got a name?” Mutt asked as he stood and put his empty glass on the scrub-pine bar.

  “Ambrose,” Wynn said. “Reverend Ambrose.”

  “Much obliged,” Mutt said as he headed for the door. “Oh, and, Willie?”

  “I know,” Willie said. “‘Get out of town.’”

  “Much obliged.”

  Earl’s house was about a quarter of a mile from the saloon. It was four thin walls and a roof of stretched and tattered tarpaper. It huddled with some other shanties near the turn onto the western face. His neighbor, a toothless old lady named Lizzie, said no one had messed with the place since word had made it up here about Earl’s confrontation with the law.

  “He’s a good, God-fearing man, that Earl,” Lizzie said. Her face was a map of the hardship of her life, deeply grooved and weathered by the wind and the dirt. “Poor lamb, just lost his way after he lost the missus and the little girl. It’s a hard life to travel alone.”

  “Yes.” Mutt nodded. “Thank you.”

  Inside Earl’s hovel it smelled of cool dirt and misery. There were a few rotted planks lying haphazardly over the earthen floor. A molded and worn rug that must have once graced the parlor of a happy family a million years ago partially covered the planks and the earth—like ribs poking through the rotting skin of a cadaver.

  A pile of straw, burlap bags and rags filled up one corner of the single room and was obviously Earl’s bed. Mutt saw a rat scurry across the floor and disappear inside the hay pile.

  A rickety table and chair was near the other side of the room, away from the door. Earl had been a carpenter once, Mutt had heard tale at the Paradise one night, but when he lost everything and fell into a bottle his talent had abandoned him too. It wasn’t very good, Mutt thought as he ran his hand along the chair’s rough back. But considering a dead man had made it, some allowances could be made.

  The table was covered with pain. Children’s slate tablets: letters, numbers and doodles, all in an innocent, clumsy hand. Lithographs, shielded from time and elements by wood and glass. A serious-looking young man with a stock of dark hair and a smiling young maiden—their live
s ahead of them—ghosts, now. One dead, the other in some hell—between life and peaceful death. A marriage certificate, some letters from his wife written while Earl fought in the war. Scraps of a life. Mutt discovered he envied the old man in the jail cell down in the valley.

  On the table was a well-traveled Bible. Mutt flipped it open. The onionskin pages crackled like dry leaves. In the front was the family history, names and dates of what white men considered important in life—birth, death, marriage, baptism. The handwriting was delicate, intricate, beautiful—a woman’s mark. The dates of Earl’s wife’s and daughter’s passing were written in thick, ugly letters, a scrawl shaky with grief and DTs.

  Mutt’s eyes widened as he noticed the other addendum to the document Earl had made in the holy book. At the top of the tree of names and dates, he had added two new lines. One traced his oldest male ancestor to Adam and the other linked his female ancestor to Eve; above the mythical progenitors, the old man had added a single line in a barely legible tracery of trembling strokes that said: Demiurge. Next to it Earl had scribbled in the margin: the Greate Olde Wurm. The handwriting was different, almost calligraphy. It was Earl’s hand, but it wasn’t. Staring at it made Mutt’s head ache and spin.

  The deputy blinked, snorted the sudden, odd, odor of rotten meat from his nostrils and flipped through the rest of the Bible. The pages were unmarred until he reached the Book of Revelation—the white man’s biggest ghost story. In every gap in the text, in every virgin inch, Earl had filled the book with more of the intricate, alien tracery. Some of it Mutt could cipher, but most of it just made his skin crawl and his eyeballs itch.

  He closed the book and picked it up to take with him. He was sure Jon would want to see this. He halted, sniffed, circling the room like it was a hungry predator ready to pounce.